Its a funny business, interviewing your best mate. Particularly if your best mate is Myleene Klass. Everybody has an opinion about her, which is fair enough: shes famous and having opinions held about you  these days  is in the job description of famousness.

The problem is, so many of those opinions are so off the mark. Maybe you think shes the bitch who broke the band that made her name? A fame-hungry attention seeker? A strumpet who couldnt wait to get her kit off in the jungle? A professional mum, whose kids are an accessory she casts off at the front door, along with her Chanel handbag? She isnt any of these things. So before I tell you who she really is, I suppose I have to deal with her being famous. Which is awkward because, in the six years that weve been friends, weve never mentioned the c word. No, not that one, I say that all the time. I mean celebrity.

Why has it never come up? Mainly because we both know that its chimerical. By which I mean: balls. As Myleene says, that billboard Im on is going to come down. Someone else is going to go up there, but no-one else is going to pay my mortgage. Ive got no greater goal than to put the girls through school and their weddings. Things that every mum  if they could provide them  would want. Fame is the by-product of what I do. Its genuinely not what I set out for.

And it wasnt. Auditioning for Popstars, the show that made Myleenes name in 2001, was an accident. She was a jobbing session musician (ever wondered who provided the haunting backing vocals on Sir Cliff Richards Millennium Prayer? Mystery solved!) and happened to be working in the studio next door. One of the judges spotted her and asked her to audition. As for other accusations, Myleene isnt bitchy. I have never heard her say a mean word about anyone, even those who have treated her badly (and Ive really tried to make her). She works hard because thats what she was brought up to do. Its a combination of Catholic guilt and Asian work ethic,she laughs.

More of a Mozart nerd than a strumpet (Hes the master, closely followed by Rachmaninoff), she did look pretty kickass in that Im A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here bikini, and can rock a maxi dress and Prada wedges  as she is the afternoon we meet for a chat  but shes a proper, actual mum, who is regularly weed and sicked on, sometimes even by her own children and not just mine. Shes not Superwoman. But maybe a grown-up Hermione Granger who accidentally got famous.

So what to tell you about first? The time she went into labour dressed as Elvis? The afternoon she ate a yam given to her by a child in Sierra Leone believing it to be a gift, only to discover it was actually a dog toy? Id like to tell you about the night a glamour model stole her shoes at Simon Cowells birthday party, then tried to start a fight with her while wearing them (its my favourite) but instead, Ive been asked to explain by my Red editors how we became friends, since we are  Ill admit  an odd couple. So Ill start there.

We met presenting the now defunct ITV show CD:UK. She was the pop one, I was the indie one. I took the job labouring under a spectacular misassumption: that people who made terrible music were aware of their own appallingness and merely along for the ride. I was disabused of this notion when one of Irelands premier boybands stormed off the show after my backstage critique of their single was somehow relayed over the tannoy in their dressing room (Im looking at you, sound guys). Myleene was the only one on the show who seemed to realise how ludicrous, and therefore hilarious, the whole pop business was. We were cast as opposites and accidentally became best pals.

As she says, We were a weird combination, but then it was like I met my sister from another mister. Six years on, we are each godmother to the children we had six weeks apart (my son, Fergus, and her daughter, Ava, were both born in 2007). My second son was born last year and Myleenes daughter Hero arrived this March. Im babied out, but she wants four. I want evens. Im from three. One always ends up being surrogate mother. I was never big sister, I was always mini mum.

Braver than me, then, but if anyone can do it, Myleene can. Roy Castle-pleasing levels of dedication have been a feature of her life since she started playing piano and violin, aged four. I was the one people threw snowballs at, she remembers. The girl in the practise room, playing the piano with the bad Gloria Estefan perm. It was not cool. But its an immigrant work ethic. My dad came over from Austria when he was seven, and Mum came in the 1960s [from the Philippines]. The mentality is, were here to work. If I didnt work a 16-hour day, I couldnt look my aunties in the eye. Youve got to remember many of them are cleaners. There are no silver spoons. Just a family of grafters.

Her family, she says, are intelligent people who never got an opportunity because those opportunities werent there. Ive got my opportunity. My god, Im not going to waste it. What my mum and dad did was very brave. Its about integration, sticking yourself right in the middle of society. And thats what Im trying to do as well.

This also explains why Myleene only got a cleaner 18 months ago (I made her find one, along with a nanny, after an incident she laughingly refers to as my breakdown in the kitchen). Id been taught to do everything myself. I got to the point where I was killing myself in order to prove what? To who? Ill be honest, I still feel uncomfortable when I go into houses with a Filipino cleaner. I bristle and I know my friends see it. I try not to show it but  without naming names  you go to certain houses, even people in the public eye, and I end up sitting downstairs with the staff.

She shrugs. The Philippines is a third world country. Life is cheap. They talk about people dying all the time. I really want to live my life, get everything out of it.

By 17, Myleene and her atrocious perm were on the 6am train from Norfolk to music college in London every Saturday. What kind of student was she? I didnt have the confidence to apply for university. I thought Id fail everything. Then my grades came through.They earned her an early post-grad at Londons prestigious Royal Academy of Arts, where she did her best to fit in with her older classmates. You have to prove you deserve to be there. So I ended up as a session musician for the singers. Thats how I got into HearSay.

Pure and Simple was the biggest selling debut single ever. I wonder what it must have been like to acquire overnight fame. She laughs. Ill let you in to a little secret. Pure and Simple had already been recorded by another band, so Im still not convinced we sang on the first thousand copies. It was such a quick turnaround.

Becoming famous was an eye-opener. I understand why people become addicted to fame because, my goodness, you ask for something and you get it. Nobody says no to you.Until  of course  the public does. Eighteen turbulent months after HearSay formed, their record sales stalled and, in a flurry of negative publicity, the band split. The employment equivalent of breaking up with your first serious boyfriend? She raises an eyebrow ironically. Yes: I thought wed be together forever  With hindsight its amazing we lasted as long as we did. There was drama every day.

By 24, Myleene was famous yet unemployed, skint and subject to a series of attacks in the papers that became attacks in public. She was shouted at, punched and spat on, once while shopping with her mum. My career finished when all my friends were leaving college. My whole world crashed down, she says. As instantly as the fame came, it went. The phone never rang. I couldnt get arrested. I went into debt. Gray came into his own.

Gray is Graham Quinn. Myleenes other half and the reason that, even though she lives life at double speed and on full volume, I never worry about her too much. A muscular, tattooed Dubliner, he was her HearSay bodyguard when they got together in 2001. He can staunch a bullet wound with a credit card and has actually done that tracheotomy-with-a-biro thing you see in films. To say hes good in a crisis would be an understatement. Youve never met two people more like chalk and cheese, she admits. We dont like the same music, we dont like the same food and we dont watch the same programmes. Its hard to think of what we do have in common but, whatever it is, its been 10 years.

In practise, they complement each other beautifully. You go over to the house and Grahams gadget-freak soundsystem will be blasting one of her favourite concertos. Shes a gentle soul and he looks after her. As she says, when everything fell apart, he protected me.

And they share some traits; like a deadpan sense of humour and caring nature. He likes to care for people, she says. People think a bodyguard is somebody who likes to have power in a situation. He is tough, I offer. He is when he needs to be. Its that idea of you knowhow to fight so you dont have to.

Like Myleene, Graham is a bullshit-free zone. That their relationship is similarly uncomplicated is one of its greatest strengths. There are no lavish dinners or huge gestures. I would rather have the trust that I have with him.

That said, Grahams proposal in 2005 involved an actual poem on the Spanish Steps in Rome. He also got down on one knee. How was it? I was uncomfortable and I could tell he was too, because its not something we do. But, luckily, he got down in a puddle... She laughs. As for the wedding, between Ava, Hero, Myleenes crazy work schedule and Graham tour-managing the likes of JLS, itll happen, when we get our act in gear. Were trying to sort it out. Ava is very keen for them to get on with it. She made me a wedding dress. Ill send you a picture! Its like a coil of silk with knitting wool and big sparkly gold frilly bits. Its fabulous.

So if post-HearSay was rock bottom, where did it all go right? The standard story is that Im A Celebrity turned things around for Myleene, which is funny because she doesnt see it that way. She still thinks it could all end tomorrow. I live off the fear. Youre only as good as your last job. Also because almost everyone told her not to do the show (I said she should but only if she understood the producers would keep going until they got a shot of her crying with spiders in her hair. What can I say? Im a ray of sunshine).

Why did she go for it? I had nothing to lose. I just wanted to work. When you cant contribute, you lose your purpose. The beauty of going into the jungle was that I didnt have a career to flog. I didnt have anything to promote so I could just genuinely be. I had the best time ever. If they could have moved my family in, I would never have left.

She did leave and found herself in huge demand. M&S, The One Show, CNN, Ten Years Younger, Classic FM Nobody was more surprised by the turnaround in her fortunes than Myleene. To her similar amazement, Ava was conceived the night she came out of the jungle. Her arrival inspired her Baby K range of kids clothes, which she really does design herself (honest).

Her future plans are a new series of Popstar To Operastar and working on the next Baby K collection. Shell also be rehearsing for her next concert, practising piano with Ava on her lap. I get to host posh classical concerts in stately homes throughout the summer. I love it because I get to play. She says thats where her heart is, really. I ask what shed be doing if she hadnt decided to take up the offer to audition for HearSay that day. Id be in a studio somewhere, making music and loving it. But she feels very lucky that she did. I know Im in a very, very privileged position. I know that people would love to be where I am and I know you only get one shot at life.

And thats my friend. She has been a pop star, played concert piano at the Royal Albert Hall (after queuing for the £3 tickets when I was a student, I never dared to dream I might actually get to play for the monarch with Mum and Dad there) and is so beautiful that I once saw a pop star forget his own name when he met her (he shook her hand and accidentally said, hello Im lovely). But, when I point this out, she shrugs and says, Jack of all trades, isnt it? Shes a girl who braved two different kinds of jungle  one literal and one of the celebrity variety  and emerged from both successful, strong and surprisingly sane.

Popstar To Operastar is on ITV1 on Sunday nights. Myleene's Baby K range is available in Mothercare stores nationwide or at myleeneklass.co.uk. Tune into Lauren Laverne every weekday from 10am-1pm on BBC Radio 6 Music.

Myleene's Best Things In Life

Best book: Theres a bit in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, where a plane crash-lands in a place full of media people and PRs. Every time Im in one of those PR situations, I think about that.

Best stress reliever: Having a baby. You cant be stressed in any other way.

Best film: Baz Luhrmanns Romeo + Juliet because Im trying to fit my house out like that with the candles, the Marys and the neon lights.

Best TV show: EastEnders. Dot Cotton is genius.

Best designer: I like my high street, but I love Prada and Miu Miu. And you cant go wrong with Chanel monochrome. Ever.

Best music: Ava loves singing along to Jessie J, but we have to change the words. Instead of grab my crotch we sing grab my watch 

Best thing in life: My babies, and my friends and family. Im soft.

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